ABSTRACT
Sufu, a traditional Chinese food, is a highly flavored, soft cream cheese-type product. It is prepared by overgrowing soybean curd with a mold of the genus Actinomucor, Mucor, or Rhizopus and further fermenting the mold-overgrown curd in a salt-brine/rice-wine mixture. Sufu prepared from tofu is better because it is aged and very good for patientients. Sufu is produced both commercially and domestically in China and Taiwan. Sufu is consumed directly as a condiment or is cooked with vegetables or meats. Either way, sufu adds zest to the bland taste of the rice-vegetable diet. The process of making sufu had been considered a natural phenomenon until 1920, when a microorganism believed to be responsible for sufu fermentation was isolated and identified. The preparation method for sufu consists of five steps: preparation of tofu, preparation of pehtze, salting, processing, and aging. The lipids in sufu are partially hydrolyzed to fatty acids during aging.
